Northport's Cannon Kingsley advances to third round in U.S. Open juniors

He should be in school right now. Ohio State's semester has been in session for two weeks and 18-year-old Cannon Kingsley of Northport is an enrolled freshman there. But he won again at the U.S. Open on Tuesday, so he’ll catch up with schoolwork after he is done with his last junior tennis tournament.

Kingsley moved on to the third round with a decidedly odd finish, when Argentina’s Thiago Agustin Tirante, seeded fifth, walked off the court three games into the second set. Kingsley had survived five set points in the first-set tiebreaker and was ahead, 7-6 (6), 2-1, when Tirante “just quit,” Kingsley said. “The guy just checked out.”

Down 1-6 in the tiebreak, “I already thought in my mind I had lost the set,” Kingsley said.

From 1-6, Tirante hit a forehand into the net, a backhand pass wide, a forehand long, another forehand long and netted a forehand. That made it 6-6, whereupon Tirante sailed a Kingsley serve wide and dumped another forehand into the net.

“Just a lot of ups and downs,” Kingsley said. “Just glad the up came at the end of the first set. And I think the guy just checked out.”

Kingsley led, 3-0 and 5-3 but went to 5-5, when Tirante twice argued line calls and, in the 12th game, Tirante watched Kingsley save two set points to force the tiebreak. Kingsley, who is commuting from his Northport home—where the tennis court in his backyard led him into the sport at 2 years old — was further grateful that Monday’s rain had pushed the match to Tuesday.

“I was so dead [Monday],” he said, “I don’t know if I would’ve been able to move” after his three-hour first-rounder on Sunday. “Got home at midnight, so sore. So thankful for that [postponement].”